The present invention relates generally to an apparatus for raising and lowering a luminaire support ring along a support pole and more particularly to an auxiliary safety assembly for use with such an apparatus.
In highway and field lighting, it is not unusual to have one or more luminaires mounted as high as 50 to 150 feet from the ground. These luminaires are generally mounted to the top of a suitable support pole. In the past, these luminaires were repaired or otherwise maintained in place, i.e., at the top of the pole. This required suitable means to reach the luminaires and was time consuming, inconvenient and obviously relatively expensive. More recently, in order to avoid these drawbacks, it has been the practice of some manufacturers to provide a high mount luminaire apparatus or system including a luminaire support mounted for movement along the pole. In this manner, when the luminaire or luminaires required maintenance work, the entire support could be moved down to the ground and after the work was completed it could be moved back up to the top of the pole.
A typical system of the type just described includes a luminaire support, typically a ring positioned around the luminaire pole and having one or more luminaires supported therefrom, and some type of latching mechanism at the top of the pole to hold the ring in place. An arrangement of cables connect the luminaire support ring to a winch assembly located at ground level for raising and lowering the support. Where the winch assembly is power driven, power actuated drive means can be provided in place at each winch assembly or a single portable drive can be provided and is typically electrically actuated using the same electrical source as that of the luminaires. This system clearly avoids the aforediscussed maintenance drawbacks associated with luminaires that are fixed at the top of their associated poles and not movable to ground level. However, this movable system does introduce a different problem, i.e., the possibility of failure of the winch assembly and/or the cable arrangement to support the luminaire support ring during its movement up or down the pole, causing the support to fall to the ground. As will be seen hereinafter, the present invention while not minimizing the possibility of such a failure (which itself is not likely) does minimize the possibility that the luminaire support will fall to the ground due to such failure.